The Internet is a wide area network of interconnected computers which employs a client-server model. The Internet includes server computers which may be accessed by client computers. Typically, a server hosts a site on the Internet which includes a collection of files or pages. The network address of a server is typically specified by a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A user may access the servers from a client via the Internet through an Internet service provider (ISP). By utilizing a browser application on the client, the user can connect to or “link” to a particular server based upon the URL address of that server.
The Internet computer network was originally designed as a communications link to facilitate the exchange of scientific information between governmental laboratories and educational institutions. However, in recent years, the increased use of the World Wide Web (WWW) has fueled explosive growth of the Internet that has extended beyond the scientific community and, indeed, into homes, businesses and classrooms. The WWW refers to a collection of Internet servers that typically utilize Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) as an applications protocol to provide users with access to files for communicating text, graphics, sound, video, etc. HTTP, in turn, may use a page description language called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to specify the format of web pages that are displayed to the users. HTML pages can include hypertext links to other servers and files, with the URL's of the target servers stored or embedded within the links.
Links present in a web page may appear to a user in a variety of forms. For example, a link may appear as underlined text, as bolded text, as text having a different color as surrounding text, or as text having some other form designed to draw the attention of the user such that the link is easily identified as such. When a user selects a link (e.g., by “clicking” on the link with an input device such as a computer mouse), the browser makes a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) request to the server identified by the URL specified in the link, and receives a web page from the identified server. A link may also be embedded within a graphical image displayed on the user's computer monitor or display. When the geographical area of the image is selected by the user, the browser again makes an TCP/IP request to the server identified by the specified URL. Thus, a user may navigate (i.e., “surf”) between various servers to find and retrieve HTML pages or documents of interest.
As use of the Internet has become more pervasive, merchants have looked to the Internet as providing a new advertising medium for their products and services. Merchants who sponsor their own web sites typically include advertising material within their site's pages. However, creating and maintaining a stand-alone web site can require a substantial amount of resources and may be beyond the means of many merchants. Also, the time and expense required to set up such a stand-alone site makes this technique unsuitable for certain seasonal, limited time, or one-shot usage. Further, the audience for this advertising material may be limited by the extent to which the merchant can attract users to visit its own site.
A technique that has been used to address these problems is the deployment of advertisements on the web sites of other sponsors or content providers who agree to sponsor the advertisements. A simple advertisement suitable for such deployment takes the form of a graphical banner. Such a banner includes an image related to the product or service being advertised, typically stored as a graphics file (e.g., a “.gif” file), and displayed according to the HTML description of the sponsoring page. A merchant is often required to pay a sponsor of the particular web site an advertising fee for the privilege of deploying its banner on the sponsor's site. The banner may also be widely distributed or deployed on many sites. However, typical advertising banners involve only one-way communication, and do not take advantage of the Internet's interactive capabilities which could otherwise be used to solicit data from prospective customers or users for generating purchase orders or leads.
To provide demographically-targeted advertising, the advertiser or distributor of the advertising may seek to obtain demographic data on its end users. A common way to acquire demographic data regarding users via the Internet is to request the information using a form written in HTML provided to the user utilizing the Internet. Demographic information obtained this way is often difficult to obtain because users are often unmotivated to fill in forms with information when they do not know who will view the information or for what purpose the information will be used.
What is needed are improved techniques for selectively distributing messages to viewers.